The pretty little white ultralight over in the Fun Fly Zone at EAA AirVenture is not meant to be a replica of any particular design by the early aviation pioneer Alberto Santos Dumont — it’s what its builders imagined he might have built next, if he hadn’t given up flying after an accident in 1910. Lee Fischer, of Larson, Wisconsin, and a gang of flight enthusiasts got together and built the airplane, 23bis, purely for fun, aiming to bring it to this week’s show at Oshkosh. “It flies good!” a tired-out Fischer told AVweb on the sunny field Saturday afternoon. “It’s stable. It doesn’t like wind. It steers with wing warping. We’ve been asking people to come by and sign their names on the wing. Best of all, Bob Hoover signed it, right here.” Fischer says the plane has flown about 14 hours.
The whole project took about seven months, Fischer said, starting in December. On June 21, the airplane flew for the first time. He flew it a few times this week at the ultralight field, and if the weather cooperates, he might fly it home, at a cruising speed of about 45 mph. But if it’s too windy, he’ll break it down and drive it home in a truck. “And it will probably never fly again,” Fischer said, with no trace of regret. “That’s OK. We built it for the people.” And the people have come, and seen, and admired. A few maybe heard of Santos Dumont and his achievements, for the first time. And everyone who signed it, says Fischer’s brochure, “will fly with the spirit of Adventure … on the wings of the plane that never was.
